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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22369849">I'm not renowned for my restraint</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blake/pseuds/Blake'>Blake</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Everyone is girls, F/F, Tortuga</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 01:01:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,948</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22369849</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blake/pseuds/Blake</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In a dark, shabby room in Tortuga crowded with ladies of the night <em>and </em>their customers, Wilhelmina Turner is kissed for the very first time.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jack Sparrow/Will Turner</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>I'm not renowned for my restraint</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In a dark, shabby room in Tortuga crowded with ladies of the night <em>and </em>their customers, Wilhelmina Turner is kissed for the very first time. It happens suddenly and irreversibly, a sticky, foul-tasting mouth over her own, and in her mind’s eye, the incongruous image of a bright-faced, pretty, golden-haired girl breathing life back into her after she nearly drowned. She thinks of Elizabeth Swann. </p>
<p>“Back off, this one’s my loot,” says a distant voice, though Will’s entire world is distant right now. Her sense are dulled, as if she’s being kissed through gauze, as if the darkness of the room is a death shroud.</p>
<p>The kiss ends as wetly as it begins, and suddenly Will is looking into the eyes of a leering, brightly painted face. “I never seen you with a man <em>before</em>,” the woman argues sharply, her frighteningly bright blue eyes inspecting Will’s face carefully. A lopsided grin grows on her face, red pigment smeared all across her mouth. “Besides, Jackie, this one’s cute.”</p>
<p>Will pulls her arms from this woman’s grip, senses rushing back to her as she realizes she’s been mistaken yet again for a man. And in the most terrible, disastrous circumstances.</p>
<p>This is all Jackie Sparrow’s fault.</p>
<p>“Easy, love,” Sparrow mutters, a warm, steady presence at Will’s back keeping her from stumbling backward. Will’s not used to drinking ale at a tavern, nor to walking on land after a full day at sea, nor to the idea of being <em>kissed</em>. Sparrow’s hands are tight around her upper arms, guiding her forward again, into the light where the strange woman still stands. “Who do you think I am?” Sparrow asks the woman. “I said she’s mine, didn’t I?”</p>
<p>Now Will saw Sparrow slapped across the face by two women in the same profession mere hours ago, though she didn’t ask for details as to what prompted such violence, so she’s braced for impact, waiting for this woman to realize she has just <em>kissed a woman </em>under false pretenses, decide falsely that Will had deceived her, and hit her in a fury.</p>
<p>But the impact never comes. Instead, the woman’s face softens a little, perhaps a note of disappointment in her brow, but nothing more violent than that. Will can’t find words in her throat, so overwhelmed by everything that’s happened in the past few hours that she can’t even think of anything concretely except the face of Elizabeth Swann, the girl who once saved her and now needs to be saved.</p>
<p>“Sorry, Jackie,” the woman says, as though Will isn’t even there. As though Jackie Sparrow is the person in need of an apology. As though kissing <em>her </em>was an affront to Jackie Sparrow.</p>
<p>Before Will can gather her wits enough to demand her own apology, Sparrow’s hands on her arms are guiding her across the room, step by wobbly step, through a maze of beds that Will refuses to look at.</p>
<p>“Do we have to sleep here?” Will hisses over her shoulder.</p>
<p>Sparrow’s voice is a low, lazy, self-satisfied growl. “Do you have money to pay for a proper room?”</p>
<p>The answer, of course, is that Will hasn’t a penny to her name. She’s entirely dependent on this fearsome, treacherous pirate whose reputation is so terrible that the whispers about it are utterly lacking in detail. She’s entirely dependent on a woman who has apparently done enough favors for the ladies of the night in Tortuga that they offer her free lodging.</p>
<p>Will finally runs into a bed that’s lit by the moon and her first thought is to wonder if it’s the only available bed because these women don’t <em>want </em>to have light enough to see their customers, or if it’s Sparrow’s special privilege to choose whichever bed she likes.</p>
<p>She turns and sits on the bed, looking up at Sparrow, who is barely tall enough to smile lasciviously down at her. Her tangled black waves of hair shine silver in the moonlight, as do her eyes, lost in the dark shadows of kohl surrounding them. She sways even when she stands still, the flesh of her breasts swinging freely, hypnotically, under her shirt. She dresses like a man without regard for how ill-fitting her clothes are, and she somehow looks handsome and pretty at the same time, strong and soft, revolting and compelling. Whatever she is, she makes Will’s stomach turn almost constantly, unless that’s just the memory of the sea under her legs, or the sounds coming from the other beds.</p>
<p>“What sort of favors did you do for these women, to earn their high regard?” Will inquires, narrowing her eyes and trying her best to seem like she knows at all what she’s insinuating.</p>
<p>A shard of gold flashes in Sparrow’s grin. “Well,” she begins, tossing the enormous weight of her hair to one side and finally taking a seat beside Will on the bed. Will’s skin prickles at the proximity, but it’s also the most comforting thing in her world right now, the only thing grounding her besides the memory of Miss Swann saving her as a young girl. “Let’s just say…” Sparrow continues. She looks out into the distant, vague dark of the rest of the room rather ominously. “…What I lack in more common forms of currency, I make up for with my tongue.”</p>
<p>Will scowls at the surprisingly delicate cheekbone on the side of Sparrow’s face. “You can talk your way into anything, is that it?” she surmises, judgmental. She misses honor and nobility, the promise of serving Miss Swann from afar and keeping her safe and precious, thinking of her beauty before sleep and her smile while working.</p>
<p>But Sparrow turns to look at her with an arched brow, and Will feels as though she must have missed the point entirely. “Yes, I suppose you could say that,” Sparrow snarls, her breath tasting of ale and salt, which is surprisingly pleasant when compared to the lingering flavor in Will’s mouth. “Oh dear, would you look at that.”</p>
<p>Will turns her head to look behind her, but Sparrow grabs her jaw and turns her back, pulling her forward with her strong callused grip. Will looks down at Sparrow’s troubling smile and then feels a wet touch to the corner of her mouth. After a moment, she realizes it’s the touch of Sparrow’s thumb, wet with spit. “What are you doing?” she asks, struggling just enough to test that Sparrow intends to keep her there until she’s done.</p>
<p>“You’re covered in Georgiana’s lips,” Sparrow says, matter-of-fact. Will remembers the smear of red across the mouth of the woman who kissed her and realizes it must have its mirror on her own face. She relaxes, allowing Sparrow to clean her. She reaches up to knock the hat off Sparrow’s head, just to feel like she has any control over the situation. Sparrow pauses when the hat lands on the floor, eyes slightly widened, but then she returns to her task and comments, “I suppose Miss Swann doesn’t leave such a mess on your face.”</p>
<p>Will’s stomach lurches at the words even though she doesn’t understand their meaning. Something about the way Sparrow talks about her, talking about Miss Swann, and talks about them together, makes Will’s skin feel hot as molten steel, softened and vulnerable. “Why should Miss Swann leave a mess on my face?” she protests, trying to harden into stubbornness instead of lingering in confusion.</p>
<p>“Why, if she wore pigment on her lips, of course.” Sparrow brushes her thumb right across Will’s lip. Will watches her black eyes focus close on the movement. It makes her throat dry, but she resists the instinct to wet her lips with her tongue, for fear of running into Sparrow’s thumb.</p>
<p>“But why-” Will begins to ask, but she’s silenced by Sparrow’s lips pressing to hers, firm and dry. Will feels suddenly quite drunk again, and just at the moment she feels her own mouth start to give under the soft pressure, Sparrow pulls abruptly away with a smack.</p>
<p>“See,” Sparrow says, pointing to her own thin red lips, only slightly smudged by a tint of lighter red. “You have a mess on your face, I kiss you, now I have a mess on my face. Savvy?”</p>
<p>Will is all kinds of horrified, or something like it. Her stomach is in knots, keeping her from stringing together one piece of information to another: Miss Swann with red lips, Miss Swann’s kiss, Sparrow’s red lips, Sparrow’s kiss, and somehow, somewhere in between all of this, Will’s own mouth?</p>
<p>Sparrow appears to spend a moment waiting for Will to react, but she can’t. All she can do is stare at Sparrow’s mouth, without clearly seeing anything. With a little grunt under her breath, Sparrow reaches over to gently tug Will’s hair free from its boyish tie, shaking it loose, releasing tension Will didn’t know she was holding in her scalp, reminding Will of distant memories of her mother’s hands plaiting her hair, of Miss Swann holding her sea-soaked hair on the deck of the ship after rescuing her. “Tell me, young Will,” Sparrow whispers as her fingers scrape across the back of Will’s skull. “Just what is it you plan to do with your bonny lass after you rescue her?”</p>
<p>“Do with her?” Will repeats dully, distantly fighting the instinct to lean into the curl of Sparrow’s hand or give into the pressure and tip forward into Sparrow’s waiting, parted mouth and its vague promises. </p>
<p>“Or is it that you don’t know what to do with her?” Sparrow counters, debating with herself.</p>
<p>“What?” Will asks. The sounds of the room around them have faded to blissful silence with all the ringing in her head and the vibrations in her skull from Sparrow’s bony fingertips.</p>
<p>Sparrow’s hand moves down to Will’s neck, and the top of her shoulder, so tense from years of working as a blacksmith with none of the financial luxury of ever receiving credit for her work. Will’s eyes fall shut in pleasure.</p>
<p>“I could show you.” Sparrow’s closer than she was before Will closed her eyes, close enough to taste, to kiss. “Show you how to please your girl.”</p>
<p>Will’s not sure what that means, if <em>she’s </em>the girl of if Miss Swann is <em>her </em>girl, or what Sparrow is suggesting, exactly, but she knows it sounds exciting. And therefore, probably, bad.</p>
<p>“Miss Swann is nothing like you,” she scrapes out between clenched teeth, but she’s unable to open her eyes to glare, because there’s a dangerous, beautiful vision in her mind’s eye: Miss Swann on the deck of a boat, and Will above her, just having rescued her, and Miss Swann’s lips moving under hers like the waves of the sea, her breath sweet as roses…</p>
<p>“You’re right,” Sparrow murmurs, lips grazing Will’s as she speaks. “I’m not renowned for my restraint.” Will shivers at the words, because they sound dark as a threat but sound like a promise to some part of her that’s never been spoken to before. “But I am renowned, as I mentioned before, for my tongue.”</p>
<p>Will opens her eyes, looking into the sea-black depths of Jackie Sparrow’s, and seeing something terribly familiar in them, something she wants very badly for reasons she does not understand. She moves her lips against Sparrow’s, without words, just movement, like waves lapping at the shore, and it feels good, and Will wants to know more, because what if, somehow, it helps save Miss Swann someday.</p>
<p>Sparrow’s tongue reaches out to touch her lips, and the last thought in Will’s mind before it goes blank is, <em>She really can talk her way into anything</em>.</p>
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